Greensboro Chamber of Commerce opens program applications for minority businesses

Next live interview. It goes without saying that the Greensboro Chamber of Commerce has opened applications for their Minority Business Accelerator Program. It’s called scale excellence. This will be their third year running the program. The best part is that it’s an experience, and it’s completely free for qualified business owners worth up to $10,000. That’s cool. Like anything free, $10,000 sounds great. So this morning we wanted to say good morning to Dr. Chanel James. PhD. CHANEL JAMES, thank you so much for joining us this morning. But first, we just need you to walk us through the program and explain how it works, scenario. So those who might want to apply can be a part of it. Yes, now is a great time to consider your business for minority businesses. So you’re at the end of the year and you’re thinking about the progress you’ve made in 2020. So behind the scenes, we’re working with a great team in this room to dedicate our resources so that we can give you the best information possible in terms of developing our growth plans. So we have anchors in the region who are willing to help us get business input. So we’re working with them and having them come up and do interviews and meetings, and we’re planning event IDs for our cohort so they can really develop plans for growth. So ours is, with information, more information and time to do business, not just in your business, minority-owned businesses can thrive. That’s what we’re doing now to prepare for 2023. Great, great, doctor. James, you know there are minority and business and women-owned businesses that you just mentioned. We’re aware of some issues specifically with those plans on how to scale to EXCEL, COMBAT and all that. A lot of what happens in business just happens when you’re not ready and you’re not ready. You can’t afford to be affected by those things happening in your environment, and according to a Bank of America study, business owners worry about recession and inflation. They worry about wages, customer safety, and more. All these things are happening. They worry about them. So the idea is that if we plan for these things, then we’re more likely to achieve our business goals and really grow our company in turbulent times. We’re excited about SCALE TO EXCEL enabling business owners to plan their businesses. This is so cool. PhD. James, you go into more detail about the participants in the program, how does the growth work? What services do you provide to help them excel in the field? So from the beginning, we start with the assessment, so we’re part of the enterprise plan, and the plan starts with you assessing the business needs. Where is the business? Some businesses are just out of their infancy. start-up phase. So they’re at that level of growth. And then some businesses are trying to figure out who they’re going to be in this future, or who they’re going to leave to scale their business to be great. First, ask participants to review Where are you evaluating Where is your business? Then we get into finances. A lot of people just lead their finances in front of their accountant and say, as long as the accountant says I’m fine, we say you need to know that you need to be educated in finance so you can work with your accountant. So we’re starting to look at those financials, I’m looking at the income statement balance and how we plan against those documents. Cash flow, how we plan your business growth from these documents. Then we also look at human resources, procurement and even development, your relationship with customers and so on. Sometimes I think that even though every business doesn’t cost money, they need customers, but they don’t work on relationships and love with customers. So we’re going to talk about your relationship, who your customers are going to be throughout the growth of your company. So we have these bi-monthly meetings to help you plan your adventure. Then we also have the so-called CEO. CEO Steering Group. That’s one of the keys to the program, you get to work with other CEOs in the area to improve and think about your business, and everyone involved in the program loves it. And at the end of the program develop an AAA action plan so they can move into the future and grow their careers. Working in a team and then working on your own is the best of both worlds. PhD. JAMES Fancy you have all these resources for people in the Greensboro community, especially those who want to move on and apply to be a part of it. So if you are interested in these applications for the SCALD TO EXCEL program, which is currently open until January 22nd at 11:59pm, like those faculties, you can find out more about the program or simply submit your Apply and visit the website at the bottom of the screen. We want to give you a second to take a picture of it now because it’s a bit long but of course it’s GREENSBORO DOT ORG ACCELERATE GREENSBORO SLASH

Greensboro Chamber of Commerce opens program applications for minority businesses

Updated: Dec. 21, 2022 10:35AM ET